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Thursday, October 22, 2015

Group Work in Google Classroom

With all that Google Classroom can do for you, there are some things it lacks. It is not a full LMS. There are some things missing. One of these items is a way to grade/submit Group Projects. We all know that collaborative work is a wonderful learning tool. Google Classroom does not have built-in method to do this; however, there are workarounds that are not difficult. Below are 2 options I use.

Group Work in Google Classroom

Option #1:

Assign a project to the whole class as any regular assignment. Attach a Google Document/Slide or other file as you would usually do.

Either create your own groups with students or have them choose who they will work with.

Once you have groups, each group must choose a “Leader” or “Submitter”. This is important in order for this method to work.

The “Leader”/“Submitter” then must share his/her document from the Classroom and give all team members editing rights. The other team members will not edit their Classroom document.Make sure all team members are listed on the document.

The group can now do this assignment as they would normally do a shared group assignment.

When the project is completed teachers will have only the “Leader”/“Submitter” turn in the actual project the whole group worked on. Remember, on the top (or title slide) all team members must be listed for the teacher to assign grades to the correct students. Teachers will only need to read/review the one project and assign scores to all members of the group. Each group member still needs to submit their assignment (even though it is blank) like any other individual project.

When the teacher goes to grade assignments, they will see all students’ submissions (the group one from the “Leader”/“Submitter” as well as the blank ones from the other members).

Teachers only need to make comments on the “Leader”/“Submitter” document. Then assign the same score to each member of that group on their blank assignments.

When the teacher “Returns” the assignment to the “Leader”/“Submitter” only that person will have editing rights to that document. This has to do with how Classroom changes ownership when “Turned In” and “Returned”. The “Leader”/“Submitter” then will re-share the document to the team members.

In short, one person submits a project, but the teacher awards points to all members in the group. It is helpful to have the group members listed for the teacher to know who to award points to in each project.

Additional alteration: If the teacher wants all members to have a final project to own, the members who normally submit a blank project can copy and paste the group project directly into the Classroom assignment so they are all submitting the same project on their own. This is up to how the teacher wants to grade assignments.

Option #2:If you don’t want the confusion of managing who is on what group, you can follow these steps.

Create a template file in Drive.

Share that file with pre-determined students in your Classroom.

Attach this document as a LINK as an Assignment.

Have only those students who are in that group click on the link (they will be the only one who can access the document as they are the only ones with rights.

Have them click “Mark as Done” to turn in.

The teacher will need to find that file in their Drive to assess the work.